My honest thoughts about AGL

Hi! I just wanted to write on here about my thoughts on AGL. Im going to acknowledge that I am kinda biased since I am in a sorority.

With this post I am going to acknowledge my privilege to join such an organization and while I am not sure if I am qualified to speak on this I just wanted to share my opinion. I am not going to reveal which sorority I exactly joined but I hope this still provides my personal insight.

When I joined college I always knew I wanted to join a sorority and during rush I was nervous because I thought I wouldn’t get into any sororities. But it all worked out and got into my top choice and made so many loving friendships and so glad I did it and the girls are great friends and fun to hang out with. :)

However I am well aware of the AGL movement going on. I totally understand their concerns for lack of inclusivity, financial accessibility or whatever.

For that I feel like the Greek organizations are actively working on it, since promoting opportunities like the student success fund and having DEI trainings. However, I know that more can be done and more should be done and I want POC and First-Gen PNMs to feel like they have a place at our sorority and if anyone treats them differently because of things out of their control, then they should be held accountable.

Personally when I am on the other side rushing girls, I don’t want them to feel nervous despite any preconceived nervousness they might have. I don’t want them to worry about how “pretty” they appear and I would just love to get to know the PNMs as genuine people, which I would love to have more of. I believe most of the girls would agree with me but I do believe some might take superficial factors as a main reason whether or not to give a girl a bid.

Because to be honest as much as I love my sorority and I think everyone is well-meaning, the girls could be a bit nicer.

With the frats they should be held more accountable to any allegations any of the members have, and fraternity brothers with allegations need to be removed from the fraternity along with further repercussions because I think AGL is very concerned about this and to be honest I believe the IFC can do a better job about this.

However, if the fraternities can make genuine effort into improving this I believe they should be able to keep their houses. It is obvious going into WashU is not a party school and I believe taking away the few opportunities we have to have a good time during the weekends will make even less students want to come to our college if we remove the frat houses and/or Greek life.

I do believe affinity groups should still have dedicated houses as well because I believe that it is important and possible solutions could either be expanding housing, creating off campus housing/ turning some of the dorms into affinity housing. I want everyone to feel as if they have a space at WashU.

Also other schools like SEC schools have a huge Greek Life scene which likely has more issues than our Greek Life and people constantly praise it and nothing is being done to change it. I actually want change to happen and I am acknowledging the faults but I don’t think it should be removed altogether.

Overall, while I believe that there needs to be Greek Life reform at WashU, the system should not be exactly abolished. Joining has helped many WashU students find quality friends and I don’t want this to be taken away from us.

Feel free to ask questions!